Marketing campaigns gone wrong! 'New' Coke, Gerber...what were they thinking?

When putting together your next marketing campaign consider what history has already proven, you can never do enough research and some ideas are just plain lousy! Advertising blunders are in most cases discovered after they've been unleashed to the public. So, although they were created with the best of intentions the end result was disastrous. Imagine spending thousands of dollars just to realize you've managed to generate a campaign that confused and/or insulted your end user causing mass loss of appeal!

Whether your campaign is regional or international research is imperative and ought to be done thoroughly. Ads that work well in North America may be a total failure if launched elsewhere for many reasons. Text and illustrations have their own meanings based on where you live. What we see, understand and interpret such as pictures, logos, words, statements, cliches, puns or sayings can  be easily misunderstood elsewhere.

Imagine investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to fully implement an advertising disaster such as the Gerber baby food campaign many years ago in Africa. Their ad used the exact same picture successfully utilized here in North America...the adorable caucasian baby, only it crashed due to lack of sales. Upon further research Gerber's discovered that due to literacy issues in Africa (many people not able to read) companies use pictures to depict what's inside the container! ...imagine that, it's kind of funny in a gross way ;) but I'm sure glad the initial research wasn't my job ikes and ewww!

Botched marketing extends over to Coke and Calvin Klein...remember in 1985 when they released 'New' Coke? I do because I was an original Coke fan and was crushed! I did go back temporarily to Coke Classic but by that time they'd already lost me to Pepsi. I'm still a proud Pepsi girl! The Calvin Klein ad although short made me immediately question the whole concept and was almost uncomfortable, what were they thinking!?